A play there is, my lord, some ten words long

A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,
Which is as brief as I have known a play;
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long

Midsummer Night’s Dream

There comes a point in some vigorous conversations when one may feel that the volume of words is like a wall, being built higher or thicker, chinks filled and fissures repaired, and all this with words and to block sexual desire and to divert it to wall building. And one may feel, too, in one’s loins, that a kiss or embrace would eliminate the need for speech. And then later, upon reflection, one may appreciate the sexual aspect of human conversation more generally.

Credit & Notes

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the only play I know of in which one of the characters plays a wall (and this while acting in the too-long play within the much longer play). I quote from Quince, the too-long play’s director:

we must have a wall in the great
chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby says the story, did
talk through the chink of a wall.

And then later, during the performance:

Pyramus: O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall!
Thisbe: I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips at all.

I suspect indeed that the best adult friendships—with members of the opposite sex or members of the same sex—involve precisely these desires which are not acted upon. In this sense all our important relationships will be sexual relationships.

This might be thought of as the inverse of what my own words, above, are proposing.

Surviving the Twenty-First Century

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